may greens ii

The next greens recipe is a bit simpler and comes from the Moosewood Cookbook (the original, if I’m not mistaken). Start by rinsing and chopping your greens just as in the previous recipe…

for starters…

may greens i

Oh look, it’s the end of May suddenly.

Lately I have been away comprehensive examing (there should be an ism mafʿul for that, you know what I mean?), conference paper presenting, final paper writing, birthday & graduation logistics coordinating, etc.

But I am back now, and in my old familiar test kitchen in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. I have a few great recipes for greens and a chutney that I’ll be posting over the next few days…only here’s the thing: I can’t remember exactly which greens they were (chard and ?) and I left the necessary cookbooks back home. But there are photos and there is memory and I’m going to do my best. That is the most we can do anyway, now, isn’t it?

two fabulous cookbooks: chez panisse pasta pizza & calzones and the original moosewood cookbook

for those of you more literate in greens than i, and that is pretty much anyone, some help with identifying these? anyone?

when life gives you leftovers, make sandwiches

I love sandwiches. Sandwiches are great for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

My favorite sandwich of late arose, like a beautiful sandwich-shaped phoenix, from the ashes of a dinner party and an overzealous trip to the farmer’s market that left me with lots of leftover Moroccan chicken, blackberry & lemon thyme jam, and fresh spicy arugula. Perfect.

you guessed it.

still here

Woah. Woah. I don’t even know what happened but summer is here. Along the way there was a spring cleaning overhaul of the apartment, a major Arabic proficiency exam, trips out of town and visits in town and was also a bit of writing papers till 4 in the morning so that I could attend all my brother’s college graduation festivities, which were of course all totally worth it. UNC Chapel Hill is simply gorgeous in May and I couldn’t be prouder of my brother who graduated with honors and also had far and away the most interesting bio of all his policy major classmates (because theirs read like a resume and his was about his love of homebrewing, score). Also I got a corner piece of the cake at the reception (double score).

I have been cooking amidst it all, believe it or not, just gotten a little lazy about the blogging part…so hopefully I’ll start to catch up a little. I’m heading back to Morocco in a month or so, so there will [inchallah] be more Moroccan recipes and food notes and photos and thoughts, but in the meantime I am enjoying a more relaxed schedule and cooking almost every day (also taking a stab at container gardening, so hopefully that will yield some yummy results before long)…

A few recipes are lined up and getting ready to go but in the meantime thought I’d share a few menus using the latest tasty elements gleaned from my CSA box:

best time for a summer meal: after the rain, before the sunset; best place: out on the balcony

Here you see roasted asparagus (simpler is better: bake with olive oil, salt and pepper at 375 degrees for 10 minutes and eat with your fingers) and new potatoes (cut in quarters, parboil till soft then fry till crispy with rosemary and salt and oil) and my favorite new salad: arugula or your fresh greens of choice with apples or strawberries (whichever are handiest), dollops of goat cheese, lavender salt, and instead of a mixed vinaigrette, keep it summer-simple by drizzling it with good olive oil and an exciting balsamic or other vinegar (my favorites are basil vinegar and dark chocolate vinaigrette, which is especially tasty with the fruit).

my creativity got lost in the mix for a while but it is back like a phoenix with this, the greatest summer appetizer i have ever created

All you need is sliced crisp apples (Pink Lady are my favorite) with a piece of earthy peppery arugula, dolce de leche, dark chocolate balsamic vinaigrette (or a thin syrup or shaved dark chocolate, if you don’t have chocolate balsamic), and – best of all – bacon-flavored toothpicks (bacon flavor optional). Like a very small but eclectic party in your mouth.

time for my closeup

beautiful disaster (that's right, I have also been listening to a ton of 90's alternative rock throwback music lately)

Oh dear, I attempted this fabulous recipe and well, as they say, things fall apart. Literally. Fortunately with strawberries, cream, and chocolate, you can’t really go wrong, even if things aren’t especially pretty. This is just the time of year for these three elements to be enjoyed in perfect harmony with a tasty Vinho Verde (or a fresh mint julep, pictured above) outdoors somewhere…

 

salt of the earth tart

It’s finally almost-spring and although a bouquet of beautiful bright vegetables hasn’t quite shown up at my door just yet, I’ve gotten my hands on some tasty local ingredients and celebrated them with a week of experimenting at savory-tart-making.

and we're in business

It starts with a grainy crunchy crust with plenty of corn flour (I say this is because a corn flour crust is earthier and tastier, and it is, but to be honest I used plenty of corn flour because I ran out of the white flour), followed with some salty Pennsylvania goat cheese with fresh herbs (can’t say that’s not earthy) mixed with a little creamy plain yogurt (that is, Pequea Valley Farm yogurt which is hands down the best yogurt I have had since leaving Morocco…oh Moroccan yogurt how I miss thee. Who remembers Jaouda yogurt?? Seriously though, folks, anyone in Philly, DC or in between should get their hands on this stuff), and topped with caramelized onions, slivers of garlic and sauteed mushrooms.

salads that sizzle

So you’re staring at your dinner party menu and trying to figure out a way to make the salad more interesting. Or you’ve decided to make it a light dinner with an extra-healthy salad as the entree. And all you can think of is boring.

yeah yeah tell me something i haven't heard

So here’s an easy way to dress up a salad with some extra smells & sounds that make any meal just a touch more interesting. And as an added bonus, almost all the ingredients in this week’s recipe are from my new CSA, so they’re all fresh, local, and organic. Yum…

candied eggplant

So I’ve been reading all about Algerian pop music lately and it made me think, why don’t I take these two beautiful eggplants I have sitting around and make one French-style and one North African-style? So I did. The Moroccan recipe wins hands-down. Julia Child’s Eggplant a la Grecque isn’t bad – actually it’s quite nice – but you really can’t beat candied eggplant. I mean, it’s candied. And it’s eggplant. At the same time. I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to trying it. Lovely for brunch or after dinner.

candied: best new way to eat your veggies

and now for something completely different: veggies falling into winter

Sadly this week was the last week my local farmstand is open till spring…pretty soon I’ll have to go much farther afield for fresh produce and get a little creative. I’ve already begun the task of making and freezing plenty of soups & sauces using vegetables that are about to slip out of season, so we’ll see how long I can make them last into the long winter. In the meantime, a last shot of vegetables slowly fading into muted autumn tones:

last look

fall colors & pumpkin pie soup

farmstand = lifesaver

The air smells like knowledge and sweaters and Woody Guthrie, for some reason.

Inspired by a recent dinner party that prominently featured the best pumpkin pie I think I’ve ever tasted, I set myself the task of making a pumpkin pie-inspired soup so I could have pumpkin pie for dinner every night without suffering the consequences of eating too much dessert. Last week squash were the most prominent feature of the local farmstand (you know it’s almost Halloween when…) so I used a butternut squash as the base of this soup. But you could definitely use pumpkin if you’ve got one lying around. I’m pretty sure this soup will be tasty no matter what. Just as long as whatever you use doesn’t come out of a can.

bruschetta from the shores of tripoli

The following is a creative culinary example of postcolonial hybridity.

That’s right. I said it.

Umm so really this is just a recipe that takes something Libyan, Zaalouk Badinjan (“Eggplant Caviar,” or a spread a bit like Baba Ghanouch) and combines it with an Italian presentation. On Moroccan flatbread.

I started with a recipe from Fiona Dunlop’s North African Kitchen – a spread made with eggplant and bread crumbs – and changed up the ingredients a bit, adding the last of my summer squash and fresh rosemary and sage. I layered it on pieces of crispy flatbread and topped it with chopped tomatoes for a bruschetta-style snack with a North African kick…

creating a new politics of truth via food